- Feb 21, 2014
- 99
- 4
- 74
hoping im not being overly hopeful here, but i am starting to wonder about a few eggs in my incubator. I currently have a filled incubator (~44 eggs) with another 8 under a broody, 12 in the incubator are from one local chicken owner (legbars and olive eggers), 12 are from another local (marans), the rest are from my own birds. my flock is mixed and as a result i can pretty much tell who laid which egg with a few exceptions for ones where i have 3 sets of 2 girls that lay near identical size and color. my rooster has been very active and i only collected eggs to hatch from girls i have seen him mating. i know he is fertile cause one of my hens already hatched out 3 chicks with at least 2 being his and several of these eggs are from that same hen.
my problem / question is should tan or light brown eggs be impossible to see any growth even at a week into incubating? today is day 7 with internal temp being constantly 99.5. the legbar/olive eggs are showing proper growth when candled, the marans and broody are 2 days behind and the marans are showing what looks like proper shadowing (compared to a video i found of marans eggs being candled at about the same age which hatched). but the light brown and tan eggs from my birds which are supposed to be fertilized are just glowing reddish gold with no sign of veining, embryo, or movement (can see veining and movement on even the dark olive eggs (amerucana x marans according to who i got them from). not too worried cause the three that hatched didnt show anything until around 2-2.5 weeks when they were mostly too shadowed to see anything. my current candling light is a compact flourescent flood light in a reflector with a cover to restrict light to the typical 1" hole, it lights up the dark marans eggs nicely even though i cant see detail in them though i can see lots of detail in the dark olive eggs.
im thinking they are just too dark or brown to see any detailing but too light to see shadowing that im seeing in the much darker marans. A few of mine in there seem to be infertile or real early deaths (clearish egg with yolk still showing yellowish), and almost non of the eggs in question are that clear. they are all a faint reddish gold to almost goldish red with no shadowing or visible yolk shadows. most of the references and info i can find is for white eggs or dark eggs and maybe a little on blue ones, but nothing on light brown being hard to candle. I can get some photos of a few of the eggs in question if needed. just wondering if this is normal for eggs this color to be impossible to candle, if i need to do something special to see anything in them, or if i just have some crazy weird eggs.
my problem / question is should tan or light brown eggs be impossible to see any growth even at a week into incubating? today is day 7 with internal temp being constantly 99.5. the legbar/olive eggs are showing proper growth when candled, the marans and broody are 2 days behind and the marans are showing what looks like proper shadowing (compared to a video i found of marans eggs being candled at about the same age which hatched). but the light brown and tan eggs from my birds which are supposed to be fertilized are just glowing reddish gold with no sign of veining, embryo, or movement (can see veining and movement on even the dark olive eggs (amerucana x marans according to who i got them from). not too worried cause the three that hatched didnt show anything until around 2-2.5 weeks when they were mostly too shadowed to see anything. my current candling light is a compact flourescent flood light in a reflector with a cover to restrict light to the typical 1" hole, it lights up the dark marans eggs nicely even though i cant see detail in them though i can see lots of detail in the dark olive eggs.
im thinking they are just too dark or brown to see any detailing but too light to see shadowing that im seeing in the much darker marans. A few of mine in there seem to be infertile or real early deaths (clearish egg with yolk still showing yellowish), and almost non of the eggs in question are that clear. they are all a faint reddish gold to almost goldish red with no shadowing or visible yolk shadows. most of the references and info i can find is for white eggs or dark eggs and maybe a little on blue ones, but nothing on light brown being hard to candle. I can get some photos of a few of the eggs in question if needed. just wondering if this is normal for eggs this color to be impossible to candle, if i need to do something special to see anything in them, or if i just have some crazy weird eggs.